Rat Poison, End of Days-H.Camping,Millerites Revisited

January 3, 2010INDIANAPOLIS — Indianapolis police say they're investigating the death of a 3-day-old whose mother ate rat poison a week before giving birth. Police said Monday that the infant's death has been ruled a homicide due to poison. The 34-year-old mother allegedly told friends she swallowed rat poison Dec. 23. Officer Kendale Adams says investigators believe it was intentional. He doesn't know how far along the woman's pregnancy was at the time. The friends took the woman to a hospital in Anderson, and she was transferred to an Indianapolis hospital where she gave birth Friday. The baby died Sunday. Adams says the woman is in a psychiatric ward at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis. The hospital declined to immediately release any information. Adams says the woman could face murder or attempted feticide charges.

Thousands of dead birds and fish in Arkansas leave many scratching heads

Maybe the Mayans were on to something?That's surely what students of the famed Mayan 2012 prophecy for the end of the world had to be thinking with the news of recent eerie wildlife die-offs in Arkansas. Just as the calendar nudged a year closer to that fateful date, birds began falling from the sky in Arkansas and a massive fish kill occurred some 125 miles to the west. Roughly 5,000 red-winged blackbirds fell from the sky over a mile of land near Beebe, a small town in northwest Arkansas, and observers spotted the fish kill near the town of Ozark. You can watch a video report on the blackbirds below, courtesy of ABC News: No one seems to know just yet what caused the two die-offs. But theories abound. In a statement Saturday morning, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission quoted staff ornithologist Karen Rowe as saying that such events have happened before around the world: "Test results usually were inconclusive, but the birds showed physical trauma and that the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail." Because it happened New Year's Eve, some officials suggest that revelers shooting fireworks may have spooked the birds, to the point that they died en masse from stress-induced cardiac arrest. "It is unlikely they were poisoned," Rowe said, "but a necropsy is the only way to determine if the birds died from trauma or toxin." Tests were to begin Monday. Meanwhile, wildlife officials say that the estimated 100,000 drum fish discovered by a tugboat captain over a 20-mile stretch of the Arkansas River appears to be a natural occurrence that isn't tied to the bird kill in any way. "The fish kill only affected one species of fish," Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission told CNN. "If it was from a pollutant, it would have affected all of the fish, not just drum fish." He added that fish kills in the area are common, though this one was larger than most. UPDATE: A state veterinarian tells NBC that preliminary necropsy results from several birds show that they died of "multiple blunt trauma to their vital organs," though what caused the trauma remains uncertain. According to Dr. George Badley, their stomachs were empty, so they weren't poisoned, and they died in midair, not upon impact with the ground. BEEBE, Ark. — Preliminary autopsies on 17 of the up to 5,000 blackbirds that fell on this town indicate they died of blunt trauma to their organs, the state's top veterinarian told NBC News on Monday. Their stomachs were empty, which rules out poison, Dr. George Badley said, and they died in midair, not on impact with the ground. That evidence, and the fact that the red-winged blackbirds fly in close flocks, suggests they suffered some massive midair collision, he added. That lends weight to theories that they were startled by something. Earlier Monday, the estimated number of dead birds was raised to between 4,000 and 5,000, up sharply from the initial estimate of 1,000. Keith Stephens, a spokesman for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, provided the new numbers. Residents of the small town of Beebe awoke Saturday to find thousands of dead blackbirds littering a 1.5-square-mile area. The birds inexplicably dropped dead, landing on homes, cars and lawns. Violent weather rumbled over much of the state Friday, including a tornado that killed three people in Cincinnati, Ark. Lightning could have killed the birds directly or startled them to the point that they became confused. Hail also has been known to knock birds from the sky. The director of Cornell University's ornithology lab in Ithaca, N.Y., said the most likely suspect is violent weather. It's probable that thousands of birds were asleep, roosting in a single tree, when a "washing machine-type thunderstorm" sucked them up into the air, disoriented them, and even fatally soaked and chilled them. "Bad weather can occasionally catch flocks off guard, blow them off a roost, and they get hurled up suddenly into this thundercloud," lab director John Fitzpatrick said. Rough weather had hit the state earlier Friday, but the worst of it was already well east of Beebe by the time the birds started falling, said Chris Buonanno, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock. If weather was the cause, the birds could have died in several ways, Fitzpatrick said. They could easily become disoriented with no lights to tell them up and down and smack into the ground. Or they could have died from exposure. The birds' feathers keep them at a toasty 103 degrees, but "once that coat gets unnaturally wet, it's only a matter of minutes before they're done for," Fitzpatrick said.

Lightning or hail are also possibilities. But what killed the fish?
Karen Rowe, an ornithologist for the state commission, noted that in 2001 lightning killed about 20 mallards at Hot Springs, and a flock of dead pelicans was found in the woods about 10 years ago. Lab tests showed that they, too, had been hit by lightning. Moreover, in 1973 hail knocked birds from the sky at Stuttgart, Ark. Some of the birds were caught in a violent storm's updrafts and became encased in ice before falling from the sky. Rowe noted that birds of prey and other animals, including dogs and cats, ate several of the dead blackbirds and suffered no ill effects. "Every dog and cat in the neighborhood that night was able to get a fresh snack that night," Rowe said. Mike Robertson, the mayor in Beebe, said the last dead bird was removed about 11 a.m. Sunday in the town about 40 miles northeast of Little Rock. A dozen workers hired by the city to do the cleanup wore environmental-protection suits for the task. Robertson said the workers wore the suits as a matter of routine and not out of fear that the birds might be contaminated. "It started at 7 a.m., picking up birds on the street, in the yards, been run over. It's just a mess," Beebe Street Department supervisor Milton McCullar told WISC-TV. Several hundred thousand red-winged blackbirds have used a wooded area in the town as a roost for the past several years. Robertson and other officials went to the roost area over the weekend and found no dead birds on the ground. "That pretty much rules out an illness" or poisoning, the mayor said. But some residents voiced concerns. "I've been to Iraq and back and not seen nothing like this," Beebe resident Jeff Drennan told local Fox16 News on Sunday.

End of Days in May? Christian group spreads word

THESE ARE HERE TO CAUSE OTHERS TO MOCK AND IGNORE THE WARNINGS OF GOD AND THE TIMEFRAME THAT IS GIVEN IN THE SCRIPTURE-THIS IS CAMPING'S FOURTH TIME IN ERRORRALEIGH, N.C. – If there had been time, Marie Exley would have liked to start a family. Instead, the 32-year-old Army veteran has less than six months left, which she'll spend spreading a stark warning: Judgment Day is almost here. Exley is part of a movement of Christians loosely organized by radio broadcasts and websites, independent of churches and convinced by their reading of the Bible that the end of the world will begin May 21, 2011. To get the word out, they're using billboards and bus stop benches, traveling caravans of RVs and volunteers passing out pamphlets on street corners]. Cities from Bridgeport, Conn., to Little Rock, Ark., now have billboards with the ominous message, and mission groups are traveling through Latin America and Africa to spread the news outside the U.S. "A lot of people might think, 'The end's coming, let's go party,'" said Exley, a veteran of two deployments in Iraq. "But we're commanded by God to warn people. I wish I could just be like everybody else, but it's so much better to know that when the end comes, you'll be safe." In August, Exley left her home in Colorado Springs, Colo., to work with Oakland, Calif.-based Family Radio Worldwide, the independent Christian ministry whose leader, Harold Camping, has calculated the May 21 date based on his reading of the Bible. She is organizing traveling columns of RVs carrying the message from city to city, a logistics challenge that her military experience has helped solve. The vehicles are scheduled to be in five North Carolina cities between now and the second week of January, but Exley will shortly be gone: overseas, where she hopes to eventually make it back to Iraq.
"I don't really have plans to come back," she said. "Time is short."
Not everyone who's heard Camping's message is taking such a dramatic step. They're remaining in their day-to-day lives, but helping publicize the prophecy in other ways. Allison Warden, of Raleigh, has been helping organize a campaign using billboards, post cards and other media in cities across the U.S. through a website, We Can Know. The 29-year-old payroll clerk laughs when asked about reactions to the message, which is plastered all over her car. "It's definitely against the grain, I know that," she said. "We're hoping people won't take our word for it, or Harold Camping's word for it. We're hoping that people will search the scriptures for themselves." Camping, 89, believes the Bible essentially functions as a cosmic calendar explaining exactly when various prophecies will be fulfilled. The retired civil engineer said all his calculations come from close readings of the Bible, but that external events like the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 are signs confirming the date. "Beyond the shadow of a doubt, May 21 will be the date of the Rapture and the day of judgment," he said. The doctrine known as the Rapture teaches that believers will be taken up to heaven, while everyone else will remain on earth for a period of torment, concluding with the end of time. Camping believes that will happen in October.
"If May 21 passes and I'm still here, that means I wasn't saved. Does that mean God's word is inaccurate or untrue? Not at all," Warden said. The belief that Christ will return to earth and bring an end to history has been a basic element of Christian belief since the first century. The Book of Revelation, which comes last in the New Testament, describes this conclusion in vivid language that has inspired Christians for centuries. But few churches are willing to set a date for the end of the world, heeding Jesus' words in the gospels of Mark and Matthew that noone can know the day or hour it will happen. Predictions like Camping's, though, aren't new. One of the most famous in history was by the *Baptist leader: William Miller, who predicted the end for Oct. 22, 1844, which came to be known as the Great Disappointment among his followers, some of whom subsequently founded the Seventh Day Adventist church. "In the U.S., there is still a significant population, mostly Protestant, who look at the Bible as kind of a puzzle, and the puzzle is God's word and it's predicting when the end times will come," said Catherine Wessinger, a professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who studies millennialism, the belief in pending apocalypse. "A lot of times these prophecies gain traction when difficulties are happening in society," she said. "Right now, there's a lot of insecurity, and this is a promise that says it's not all random, it's God's plan." Past predictions that failed to come true don't have any bearing on the current calculation, believers maintain. "It would be like telling the Wright brothers that every other attempt to fly has failed, so you shouldn't even try," said Chris McCann, who works with eBible Fellowship, one of the groups spreading the message. For believers like McCann, theirs is actually a message of hope and compassion: God's compassion for people, and the hope that there's still time to be saved. That, ultimately, is what spurs on Exley, who said her beliefs have alienated her from most of her friends and family. Her hope is that not everyone who hears her message will mock it, and that even people who dismiss her now might still come to believe. "If you still want to say we're crazy, go ahead," she said. "But it doesn't hurt to look into it."

*William Miller (February 15, 1782 – December 20, 1849) was an American Baptist preacher who is credited with beginning the mid-nineteenth century North American religious movement now known as Adventism. Among his direct spiritual heirs are several major religious denominations, including Seventh-day Adventists and Advent Christians. Later movements found inspiration in Miller's emphasis on Bible prophecy. His own followers are known as Millerites. William Miller was born on February 15, 1782, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His parents were Captain William Miller, a veteran of the American Revolution, and Paulina, the daughter of Elnathan Phelps. When he was four years old, his family moved to rural Low Hampton, New York. Miller was educated at home by his mother until the age of nine, when he attended the newly established East Poultney District School. Miller is not known to have undertaken any type of formal study after the age of eighteen, though he continued to read widely and voraciously. As a youth, he had access to the private libraries of Judge James Witherell and Congressman Matthew Lyon in nearby Fairhaven, Vermont, as well as that of Alexander Cruikshanks of Whitehall, New York. In 1803, Miller married Lucy Smith and moved to her nearby hometown of Poultney, where he took up farming. While in Poultney, Miller was elected to a number of civil offices, starting with the office of Constable. In 1809 he was elected to the office of Deputy Sheriff and at an unknown date was elected Justice of the Peace. Miller served in the Vermont militia and was commissioned a lieutenant on July 21, 1810. He was reasonably well off, owning a house, land, and at least two horses. Shortly after his move to Poultney, Miller rejected his Baptist heritage and became a Deist. In his biography Miller records his conversion: "I became acquainted with the principal men in that village [Poultney, Vermont], who were professedly Deists; but they were good citizens, and of a moral and serious deportment. They put into my hands the works of Voltaire, [David] Hume, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, and other deistical writers." After the war, and following his discharge from the army on June 18, 1815, Miller returned to Poultney. Shortly after his return however, he moved with his family back to Low Hampton, where he purchased a farm (now a historic site owned and operated byAdventist Heritage Ministry). Throughout this time period Miller was deeply concerned with the question of death and an afterlife. This reflection upon his own mortality followed the recent deaths of his father and sister; and his experiences as a soldier in the war. Miller apparently felt that there were only two options possible following death: annihilation, and accountability; neither of which he was comfortable with. Soon after his return to Low Hampton, Miller took tentative steps towards regaining his Baptist faith. At first he attempted to combine both, publicly espousing Deism while simultaneously attending his local Baptist church. His attendance turned to participation when he was asked to read the day's sermon during one of the local minister's frequent absences. His participation changed to commitment one Sunday when he was reading a sermon on the duties of parents and became choked with emotion. Miller records the experience: "Suddenly the character of a Savior was vividly impressed upon my mind. It seemed that there might be a Being so good and compassionate as to Himself atone for our transgressions, and thereby save us from suffering the penalty of sin. I immediately felt how lovely such a Being must be; and imagined that I could cast myself into the arms of, and trust in the mercy of, such an One."Following his conversion, Miller was soon challenged by his Deist friends to justify his newfound faith. He did so by examining the Bible closely, declaring to one friend "If he would give me time, I would harmonize all these apparent contradictions to my own satisfaction, or I will be a Deist still." Miller commenced with Genesis 1:1, studying each verse and not moving on until he felt the meaning was clear. In this way he became convinced firstly, that postmillennialism was unbiblical; and secondly, that the time of Christ’s Secong Coming was revealed in Bible prophecy. Basing his belief principally on Daniel 8:14: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed", Miller assumed that the cleansing of the sanctuary represented the Earth's purification by fire at Christ's Second Coming. Then, using the interpretive principle of the "day-year principle", Miller, and others, interpreted a day in prophecy to read not as a 24-hour period, but rather as a calendar year. Further, Miller became convinced that the 2,300 day period started in 457 B.C, with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple calculation then revealed that this period would end in 1844. Miller records, "I was thus brought... to the solemn conclusion, that in about twenty-five years from that time 1818 all the affairs of our present state would be wound up."Although Miller was convinced of his calculations by 1818, he continued to study privately until 1823 to ensure the correctness of his interpretation. In September 1822, Miller formally stated his conclusions in a twenty-point document, including article 15: "I believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ is near, even at the door, even within twenty-one years,--on or before 1844." Miller did not, however, begin his public lecturing until the first Sunday in August, 1831 in the town of Dresden.In 1832 Miller submitted a series of sixteen articles to the Vermont Telegraph, a Baptist newspaper. The first of these was published on May 15, and Miller writes of the public's response: "I began to be flooded with letters of inquiry respecting my views; and visitors flocked to converse with me on the subject." In 1834, unable to personally comply with many of the urgent requests for information and the invitations to travel and preach that he received, Miller published a synopsis of his teachings in a 64 page tract with the lengthy title: Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about the Year 1844: Exhibited in a Course of Lectures.
From 1840 onwards, Millerism was transformed from an "obscure, regional movement into a national campaign." The key figure in this transformation was Joshua Vaughan Himes, the pastor of Chardon Street Chapel in Boston, Massachusetts, and an able and experienced publisher. Though Himes did not fully accept Miller’s ideas until 1842, he established the fortnightly paper "Signs of the Times" on February 28, 1840, to publicize them.Despite the urging of his supporters, Miller never personally set an exact date for the expected Second Advent. However, in response to their urgings, he did narrow the time-period to sometime in the Jewish year beginning in the Gregorian year 1843, stating: "My principles in brief, are, that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844.March 21, 1844, passed without incident, and further discussion and study resulted in the brief adoption of a new date (April 18, 1844) based on the Karaite Jewish calendar (as opposed to the Rabbinic calendar). Like the previous date, April 18 passed without Christ's return. Miller responded publicly, writing, "I confess my error, and acknowledge my disappointment; yet I still believe that the day of the Lord is near, even at the door."In August 1844 at a camp-meeting in Exeter, New Hampshire, Samuel S. Snow presented a message that became known as the "seventh-month" message or the "true midnight cry." In a discussion based on scriptural typology, Snow presented his conclusion (still based on the 2300 day prophecy in Daniel 8:14), that Christ would return on, "the tenth day of the seventh month of the present year, 1844." Again using the calendar of the Karaite Jews, this date was determined to be October 22, 1844. The sun rose on the morning of October 23 like any other day, and October 22 became the Millerites' Great Disappointment. Hiram Edson recorded that "Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before... We wept, and wept, till the day dawn." Following the Great Disappointment most Millerites simply gave up their beliefs. Some did not and viewpoints and explanations proliferated. Miller initially seems to have thought that Christ’s Second Coming was still going to take place that "the year of expectation was according to prophecy; but...that there might be an error in Bible chronology, which was of human origin, that could throw the date off somewhat and account for the discrepancy." Miller never gave up his belief in the Second Coming of Christ; he died on December 20, 1849, still convinced that the Second Coming was imminent. Miller is buried near his home in Low Hampton, NY and his home is a registered National Historic Landmark and preserved as a museum. Estimates of Miller's followers the Millerites vary between 50,000, and 500,000. Miller’s legacy includes the Advent Christian Church with 61,000 members, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church with over 16 million members. Both these denominations have a direct connection with the Millerites and the Great Disappointment of 1844. A number of other individuals with ties to the Millerites founded various short-lived groups. These include Clorinda S. Minor, who led a group of seven to Palestine to prepare for Christ's second coming at a later date. Miller was an active Freemason until 1831.Miller resigned his Masonic membership in 1831, stating that he did so to "avoid fellowship with any practice that may be incompatible with the word of God among masons".By 1833 he wrote in a letter to treat Freemasonry "as they would any other evil".

Comments

Persecutions are very horrible sinsWhen Jesus Christ suffered persecutions on the earth, there were many natural disasters
The period that Jesus Christ came to the earth, was Roman Empire (27 BC - 476 AC) in the West Corner of the Earth and Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AC) in the East Corner of the Earth. Jesus Christ Suffered horrible persecutions on the earth.
Around this period, even there were not many written records of natural disaster in West Corner of the Earth. But in the East Corner of the Earth, Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AC) had entered a most prosperous science development period. Han Dynasty had been able to accurately record many natural disasters.
Natural disasters towards the end of West Han Dynasty (206BC-9AC) were much more than earlier days of West Han. East Han Dynasty (25–220 AC) had much more natural disasters than West Han.
According to these records, this period had brought the world possibly record-breaking natural disasters. Around Jesus Christ was born through Roman Empire proclaimed religious tolerance of Christians throughout the empire, this period has worst natural disasters in history.(1) The Halley Comet
9 Oct 12BC, Han Dynasty had recorded The Halley Comet. 《汉书•五行志》(2) Huge Sunspot
On 10 May 28BC, a huge sunspot appeared. 《汉书•五行志》(3) Tsunami (or storm surge )
Han Dynasty had records 7 times tsunami (some of them did not mention earthquake, they were possible storm surges). The most serious one was towards the end of Western Han (about 8BC – 9AC). Tsunami caused sea water to back up into the rivers. Hundreds miles land were submerged.(4) Earthquake
Han Dynasty had records many earthquakes. Most earthquakes happened was towards the end of West Han (206BC-9AC) until East Han (25–220 AC).
The most horrible earthquake happened on 11 Nov 7BC. This earthquake affected several provinces in the vicinity. And it was also said that this earthquake had biggest felt areas before 1000AC.(5) Volcanoe
According to Ice cores analysis, the record shows that on average eruptions have been more frequent and more explosive during the most recent 2000 years than in the previous 2100 years. Ice core volcanic records indicate that before 0 AC, there are seldom eruptions. After 0AC, eruptions suddenly increased. (Liu Bang was born in 256BC. Jesus Christ was born around 0 AC. During 256BC-0AC, there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, Satan and his angels lost their place in heaven. Satan was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.)(6) Other Natural disasters
There were also other horrible natural disasters from the end of Western Han (about 8BC – 9AC) to East Han (25–220 AC).
According to the records we could see that there were much more natural disasters in this period than other periods in history.